Mongolian Gazelle

Mongolian Gazelle

(Gazella gutturosa), also zeren, an ungulate of the genus Gazella of the family Bovidae. The body is slender and well-proportioned. The animal measures 105-150 cm long and 54-84 cm high at the shoulder and weighs 20-39 kg. Only the males have horns, which have numerous ring-like bulges. The Mongolian gazelle is distributed predominantly in Central Asia. In the USSR it is found primarily in the southeastern Altai. The animal prefers steppes and semideserts and feeds on herbaceous plants, mainly Leymus ramosum and wormwood. The animals live in small herds of 20-30 individuals, but during migration periods they form herds of up to several hundred individuals. The female gives birth to one or two young in May to early June. The Mongolian gazelle is hunted for its flesh, hide, and horns, and its numbers are rapidly diminishing.

The jewel of this grassland is Mongolias Eastern Steppe, which is home to over a million Mongolian gazelle the last large population of migrating ungulates in Asia, and the reason for the Daurian Steppes designation as an IUCN-WCPA Critical Global Region and a WWF Global 200 Ecoregion.

Look out in the rest of the series for some TV firsts, including two million migrating Mongolian gazelle, venomous sea snakes in newly-discovered Indonesian coral reefs, a flock of 20 million red-billed quelea and an extraordinary deep-sea light show performed by vampire squid.

However it soon became clear that the main contributor is pasture decline due to grazing pressure--the same factor which imperils the future of the wild horse as well as the herds of ibex, argali, Mongolian gazelle, black-tailed gazelle and the critically endangered saiga antelope.

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